Bulldogs ready to welcome Gophers, capacity crowds to Amsoil Arena
DULUTH — Adam Kleber still remembers his first time watching the Bulldogs and Golden Gophers men's hockey programs do battle at Amsoil Arena.
It was a late October game in 2019, the second half of a home-and-home series between Minnesota and Minnesota Duluth. Kleber, who grew up in the Twin Cities suburb of Chaska, was in eighth grade at the time and he may or may not have been cheering for the Gophers back then.
"I grew up a Gopher fan, but once I went through the recruiting process, then all I wanted to be was a Bulldog," Kleber said. "So happy to be here."
The Bulldogs and Gophers are set to square off this weekend at 7:07 p.m. Friday and 6:07 p.m. Saturday in a nonconference series played before capacity crowds at Amsoil Arena in Duluth.
Like a Detroit Red Wings fan getting drafted by an Original 6 rival, the 18-year-old Kleber is no longer a Gophers fan. He has switched allegiances to the program that during his young lifetime has been to five NCAA Frozen Fours and won three national championships.
And while the Gophers have been to 23 Frozen Fours and won five NCAA titles in their long history, the program's last NCAA title came three years before Kleber was born. Between 2006 and when Kleber committed to UMD in the summer of 2022, the Gophers had made the Frozen Four three times.
UMD was coming off its fourth-straight Frozen Four appearance when Kleber committed to UMD. And what he remembers about that night at Amsoil Arena was the Bulldogs chasing a three-peat which would eventually be foiled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It'll be really cool to step up there Friday and know that was the first game you watched," said Kleber, who cited his comfort level with UMD's coaching staff as to why he committed to the Bulldogs in 2022. "Now it's come in full circle that I'm going to be playing against the Gophers."
Kleber is one of four Twin Cities-area natives on a Bulldogs roster that includes 13 Minnesotans. Five grew up in Hermantown (one via Ely). Of those 13, only seven were alive the last time Minnesota won a national championship in the spring of 2003.
The only Minnesotan on the Bulldogs roster who might remember the Gophers' back-to-back NCAA titles in 2002 and 2003 is fifth-year senior forward Joe Molenaar. The Minnetonka native is a transfer who came to UMD this season after four years at St. Cloud State.
Born in October 1999, Molenaar was just a preschooler when the Gophers went back-to-back. Like Kleber, it was the Bulldogs winning NCAA titles during Molenaar's more impressionable years. He was 11 when the Bulldogs won their first title in 2011 at Xcel Energy Center and a senior in high school when they won again at Xcel in 2018.
Molenaar said he always grew up a "Minnesota hockey fan" cheering for all of the state's NCAA Division I teams, though he did consider himself a pure Bulldogs fan at one point. That was when his cousin, Dan, played for UMD from 2013-2017. Joe Molenaar was at the 2017 Frozen Four in Chicago cheering on the Bulldogs during Dan's senior season.
Molenaar said this week that series against the Gophers are always big weekends, no matter where the series is played throughout the state. The crowds are always great, at Mariucci Arena in Minneapolis, Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud or Amsoil Arena in Duluth.
"It's just a really fun weekend," he said. "It's a team everybody really enjoys playing and it's just a good rivalry weekend."
Bulldogs coach Scott Sandelin said this week it was Gophers coach Bob Motzko who pushed to play both games at one site each year instead of playing home-and-home series. The 2024-25 season is the first of a four-year scheduling agreement between UMD and Minnesota with two games scheduled in Minneapolis in 2025-26 and 2027-28, and two in Duluth in 2026-27.
"I don't know why. Maybe he wanted to get out of Minneapolis for a couple days," Sandelin said of Motzko's reasoning. "It's fine. I think it's good. It's good for our community. It's good for our fans. It's good for our businesses to have people stay for a weekend versus not staying or maybe staying."
"I thought we got rid of pucks too soon," Sandelin said. "It might be a combination of their pressure, not quick enough puck support, just not knowing when you get the puck what your options are. Those are all things that — yeah, some of it's young guys learning the league, but it wasn't just our young guys. It's some older guys and then you start getting into that and you start forcing plays. So a little bit more moxie with the puck, more patience. Sometimes you got to just let plays and situations develop before you start forcing pucks."
"I thought the two games he's played he maybe started slow, but got better as the game went on," Sandelin said. "He scored 20 goals in the USHL and he's got a good stick. So he's creeping into that mix probably more than he did two, three weeks ago, and that's based on watching him in games."
Molenaar said it was the same at SCSU. It's tough to pick a "top" rival these days. What has been easy, Molenaar said this week, is transitioning from one rival to another. He didn't expect it to be, but maybe should have with Huskies coach Brett Larson being a former assistant under Sandelin.
"The transition has been pretty smooth for me," said Molenaar, who got his first goal as a Bulldog last Friday at Lowell. "The guys have been great, the coaches. Obviously (Larson) was here for a while, so the system and all of that has been fairly similar. It's been smooth and a real joy for me."
